This book brings Christian theology, creative literature, and literary critical theory into dialogue on the theme of 'the end'ContentsAcknowledgements.Part I: Facing the End:1. The Problem of Closure: John Fowles' the French Lieutenant's Woman and Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot.2. Theology and Literature--A Dialogue.3. The End Organizes the Human Story: Frank Kermode.4. The End Discloses a Desired World: Northrop Frye.5. Biblical Eschatology and Openness.6. Closure and Openness in Ending.Part II: Deferment and Hope:7. The End Defers Meaning: Jacques Derrida.8. Death and the Other.9. Openness and Relativism.10. The End Opens Hope: Paul Ricoeur.11. Hope and a Passion for the Possible.12. Hoping in the Face of Death.Part III: Taking Death Seriously:13. A Journey to Nothingness: Shakespeare's King Lear.14. Human Surplus and Excess.15. Images of a Desirable and Undesirable World.16. The Configuring of Time.17. Looking Upon Death.18. Death the Last Enemy.19. Creation from Nothing.Part IV: A Question of Identity:20. Resurrection and the Idea of Replication.21. Problems About Identity.22. Closing the Gap? A Modified Dualism.23. The Person and the Finality of Death.24. Survival and Relationships: Doris Lessing's Memoirs of A Survivor.25. Corporate Resurrection.26. The Identity of the Self: Lessing's the Making of the Representative for Planet 8.27. The Making of the Person.Part V: the Eternal Moment:28. The Problem of Fragmentation By Time: T. S. Eliot's 'Ash Wednesday'.29. The Problem of Isolation in Time: Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway.30. Eliot and the Timeless Moment: the Four Quartets.31. Eternity as Simultaneity?32. The Healing of Time.33. Woolf and the Symbols of Eternity: to the Lighthouse and Between the Acts.Part VI: Expecting the Unexpected:34. Two Parables of Waiting.35. The Reversal of Expectations.36. Two Plays of Waiting: Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Endgame.37. The Futility of Waiting: (A) Waiting for the 'Not Yet'.38. Waiting For a Possible Future.39. The Futility of Waiting: (B) A Programmed Future.Part VII: The Arrow of Time:40. The One-Way Flight of the Arrow.41. The Arrow Points Backwards: Martin Amis' Time's Arrow.42. The Counter-Movement to Evolution.43. Cycles of Torment and Renewal: Flann O'Brien's the Third Policeman and James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.44. Preservation and Retroaction.45. The Eternal Dance.Part VIII: A Fuller Presence:46. The Desire for Presence.47. Millennium and Utopia.48. Fictional Images of Utopia: Aldous Huxley's Island and Ursula Leguin's the Dispossessed.49. The Postmodern Critique of Full Presence.50. Absence at the Heart of Existence.51. Theological Versions of Hidden Presence.52. The Millennial Hope.Part IX: Our Eternal Dwelling-Place:53. Participating in Triune Relationships.54. Dwelling in Triune Spaces.55. Particularity and Eschatology.56. The Eternal City.Index.